


where would the end of this waiting be

by deadwine



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band), 방탄소년단 | Bangtan Boys | BTS
Genre: Canon Compliant, Confessions, Established Relationship, Fluff, Introspection, Jeon Jungkook is Whipped, Kim Mingyu is Whipped, Light Angst, M/M, idolverse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-26
Updated: 2020-01-26
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:08:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22423075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deadwine/pseuds/deadwine
Summary: This new year's apart shouldn't feel very different from their daily distance from each other but it does.
Relationships: Jeon Jungkook & Kim Mingyu, Jeon Jungkook/Kim Mingyu
Comments: 11
Kudos: 74
Collections: BBBFest Debut Round: The Bittersweet Option





	where would the end of this waiting be

**Author's Note:**

> hello! my first complete gyukook fic is finally here and it is not what i expected, to be honest!  
> these are my favourite soft boys and this fic is basically just a long train of thought.  
> this is another one for the bbbfest and the prompts filled are-  
> company camera 20 cm from face at all times  
> addicted to the stage and only feeling alive when performing  
> Believing The Myth  
> loving it and realising you're the only one that feels that way  
> subtract all parts of you that came from them and there's nothing left  
> hope you enjoy dumb boys in love!

**January 1st, 2020, 12:30 a.m.**

New year's at Times Square is bittersweet. The chilly rains of the day before had given way to a cold night warmed by the bodies packed onto the streets and the inexplicable frenzy of loud, public revelry.

Dancing out in the open, in the midst of a languageless celebration feels like a moment frozen in time. much of the last few years has been surreal but this is novel in a way even their year-long stadium tour hadn’t prepared them for- watching thousands of fans cover all the roads and alleys leading up to them, performing right in the middle of the mayhem; standing head-to-head with artists that no longer seemed as untouchable as they once did. It's bizzare that they're a part of it all and Jungkook is in awe of where he finds himself.

He loses himself to the energy of the crowd, buzzing from a rush he isn't used to feeling offstage- though, perhaps, they haven't really stepped off the stage in a long time. Their group is beyond the seven of them now, and none of them has ever clinged to the belief that bts is the sum of only these constituent parts. 

Off every stage is a camera (and twenty more behind that one) and every camera is yet another stage. Jungkook hates cameras but loves the stage and has now come to have mixed feelings for both. But he lives with it, is grateful for it even, if that's the price to pay for the feverish ringing in his ears as he runs across the length of a stadium, for the smiles and tears he catches across crowds that stay with him long past sleepless flights from one alien city to the next one.

And yet, just this once, he desperately wishes himself away from his life on screen, _this life_. Would give up the lights streaking over New York in a heartbeat to be home- perhaps he had been better off in his rootlessness, perhaps finding safety in a person always spelt trouble if that person was always oceans apart from you- a home that finally wasn't Bangtan, both his creator and creation; a home which was the sum of its constituent parts and nothing more.

Jungkook traces the phone in his pocket, watching the ball drop in front of them, as they ring in a new decade. He smiles as Jimin pulls them all in for a group hug.

 _This is good. This is home, too._ He reminds himself, clutching the phone tighter. 

**December 31st 2019, 10:25 a.m.**

**_Mingyu_ **

_happy new year_ 💕

_*photo attached*_

**_Jungkook_ **

_WHY ARE YOU HALFNAKED IT'S FREEZING THERE_

**_Mingyu_ **

_miss you_ 😘

_*photo attached*_

**_Jungkook_ **

_I'M ON A LIVESTREAM WITH THE MEMBERS YOU ASSHOLE_

**_Mingyu_ **

_*photo attached*_

**_Jungkook_ **

_STOOP_

_i'm muting you_

_i can't get a boner right now_

**_Mingyu_ **

😣😣😣

😣😣😣😣😣😣😣

_kook_

_kook_

_jungkook_

_you didn't even ask me how the performance was_

New Year's Eve on camera is painful; they've barely caught six hours of sleep and there's rehearsals and yet another performance looming on their minds. It's a more heartfelt dialogue, understated as no one has the energy to do anything more than just be. But Jungkook fidgets and bites his lips and hopes his discomfort goes unnoticed, that it's pushed behind the veil beyond which lies the boundaries of the conversation around him because everything feels like a lie. It's a funny thought considering what they do has always had an often unpalatable dose of play-pretend attached to it.

But this feels different- sitting with the others and talking to their fans long past midnight in Korean time is unlike every other missed occasion and sacrifice Jungkook has had to make for the team. 

It's been a decade of Jungkook believing in this life, living it not just out of compulsion but thriving in that narrow space between accomplishment and isolation, terrifying to a lot of the others who were in the same business. It makes sense, then, for him to enter the new decade with a taste of that alien bitterness. 

The thing is Jungkook has always controlled the boundaries of his relationship with his family. it's a closeness that grew out of distance and they're mostly comfortable with a love shared across continents, seeping out of cracked mobile phone screens. It's also selfish but Jungkook learnt very early which strings to keep loose if he needed to survive the manic pace of the road he had chosen to walk on. He didn't know about the possibility of a Times Square or a Billboards back then, wouldn't have believed in this future if it had been foretold. But he knew he wouldn't settle, not if there was _more_ , within his reach.

But Mingyu. _Kim fucking Mingyu._ He was a glitch in Jungkook's perfect little system of perfection from the very second Jungkook let himself pause, to allow Mingyu to really figure into his mind-map; a blink and a "oh, it's _you_ " of bringing something into existence by taking cognisance of it.

It didn't happen at the first, second or even third time they met. It wasn't at those repetitive award shows where they'd share crafted smiles and bows as they passed each other or even at year-end events where Yugyeom started to initiate polite conversation with a couple more idols of their age, dragging Jungkook along with him. 

Jungkook had known Mingyu, shared a group chat with him even, for almost two years before Jungkook and Mingyu really met each other in a way that mattered. 

But everything before is subsumed in the blurry rush of the aftermath: they had kissed within a week and were properly dating in two. within a month even their dorms were littered with evidence of their coexistence. 

Jungkook knew dating Mingyu would be difficult, given who they were. He was prepared for them to call it quits at every hiccup in those first few months, every deleted text and covert meet-up, every aborted phone call and this added layer of secrecy; at the amount of care needed to keep this _fragile,_ fragile thing alive.

He did not expect that dating Mingyu would also be so terribly easy- stripped off all their tags and embellishments as professionals and sons and individuals with responsibilities, when all that it was composed of were two boys, bared down to mere skin stretched over bones and their unspeakable longing. 

Mingyu is soft and compliant and stubborn and taciturn and Jungkook can't box him into words, can't put him in a song without it feeling too little, not enough words to encapsulate something that could have, _should have_ , by all means tired him out by now; he's never done well with rules anyway. But Mingyu is the comfort of a steaming cup of coffee wrapped in warm blankets on a cold winter morning. He sends Jungkook poetry on live broadcasts and kisses his eyelids on the odd nights that he manages to sneak into Jungkook's studio only to find him asleep in his chair, doused in the neon lights flickering from his keyboard. Mingyu sends him pouty selfies if he forgets to call or doesn't reply to his texts and long voice notes on nights apart, syllables stumbling and words slurring; half formed thoughts and endearments, fantasies for rare days together.

And Jungkook, he has been helpless since day one. He can't help but reciprocate, he _wants to._ He finds himself peeling back layer after layer stitched on painstakingly for years, baring himself bruises and scabs and all because he is compelled to. For the first time in his life, someone has expectations of him, of jJongguk, the boy and not Jungkook, the idol and he dives into it, into _Mingyu._ He never knew giving himself over could be liberating but now that he does, it's addictive, relentless. 

It's been over a year since they've been in a relationship and still Mingyu's toothy grin punches him straight in the chest. 

So, New Year's Eve is a different kind of pain. Because Jungkook is used to the distance but he's the closest he's ever been to giving something up to bridge it. Bangtan has always been home but Mingyu spells Jungkook whole and alive and makes him his own person, unlike the one among seven he has long believed himself to be. 

**_Jungkook_ **

_im sure you were amazing, gyu_

_miss you too_

**January 1st, 2020, 1 a.m.**

Jungkook casts a glance at Jimin, asleep on the backseat of the car, head inclined on the window just as his phone starts ringing.

"Is it the new year there yet?" Mingyu sounds half-awake and Jungkook quickly calculates that it must be some time in the afternoon back in Seoul.

"Yeah, just an hour past. Did you just wake up?" 

"Mhmm..had too much to drink after getting back to the dorm." 

Jungkook tries not to be envious as Mingyu recounts the night before, something about Jeonghan and a drinking game he was bound to fail from the very beginning. He sounds tired but happy.

"Sounds like a good way to ring in the new year," he manages to interrupt what was slowly taking the shape of a long ramble.

"Well, you sound bitter."

"I- I just miss you, I guess," Jungkook exhales. The car has finally picked up speed, leaving behind the seemingly endless rows of cars and people out still, perhaps determined to catch the frosty sunrise on those very streets.

"So you've said. I mean- I miss you too," Mingyu giggles softly and Jungkook's cracked iphone and the thousands of miles in between them can't dull the blow that lands on his heart.

Mingyu continues, "This is not very different from last year though, we were at the same venue the whole night and barely managed to make eye contact. If you think about it, maybe this is-"

"I wasn't in love with you a year ago." slips out before jungkook can even comprehend what he's said. There's silence on the line and jungkook takes the leap. "Maybe I was getting there, and didn't realise why exactly even looking at you was becoming so overwhelming. Maybe I was halfway in love from the very beginning. I'm not very sure about all that. I just know that I'm in love with you now. It's all I could think about the minute my flight took off from Seoul and I needed you to know. you don't have to answer, or say anything really. I get if you're not there yet.." he trails off, running out of steam now that he had laid it all out there. The pause after is unsettling and it extends uncomfortably.

Mingyu's voice is loud and clear when it comes through, like he's shaken off his sleep to say what he has to now.

"You fucking idiot. you didn't listen to a word I said this phone call, did you? the reason I woke up so late, Jeonghan's game that I failed miserably? Do you know what it was?" Jungkook doesn't see what that has to do with anything.

"Is that a rhetorical question, how is it relevant?"

"I HAD TO TAKE A SHOT EVERYTIME I SAID YOUR NAME, YOU DUMBASS. I DIDN'T LAST HALF AN HOUR. SEUNGKWAN AND MYUNGHO WON'T STOP GIVING ME SHIT ABOUT IT. IN FACT, I'VE BEEN GETTING SHIT FOR MY _LOVESICK JUNGKOOK FACE_ FOR MONTHS NOW. I'M SAYING I LOVE YOU TOO, IN CASE YOU STILL HAVEN'T CAUGHT UP TO IT." All of a sudden, Mingyu is screaming into his ears and he sits up wide-eyed, automatically turning to check on Jimin and finds him staring back, adequately surprised but with an eyebrow raised, egging him on.

"I- am an idiot, clearly," he finally settles on.

Prompt comes the reply, "You are." Jungkook continues, "I also love you." Jimin is smirking at him. He sharply turns towards the window and resolutely stares at his own reflection, determined to avoid his smug gaze. 

Mingyu sighs as if having to deal with a particularly annoying child, "I love you too." and then softer, _shy_ , " I really, really love you kook-ah." Jungkook's cheeks burn and his head feels too heavy on his shoulders; his heart is rattling out of his chest, against the carseat and ringing in his ears. 

"When do you leave for the tour?"

"Two days after you come back. But i've already worked things around. I'll be there at the dorm- yours, I mean."

Jungkook is flooded with warmth and he doesn't even hesitate to say the next bit in front of jimin. "Maybe we can christen my new apartment instead." 

"I _knew_ you liked my selfies last night. But. Yes. Your umm apartment. We could. Yes." he stutters suddenly bashful and Jungkook is so terribly endeared. Jimin coughs loudly.

"Right. I'll let you get out of bed now. See you in two days. Tell Jihoon hyung I said hi."

"Ughh," whines Mingyu, "I regret ever introducing you two, you always gang up on me."

"Hmm, true." Jungkook is slightly more composed, more confident now that he's no longer sitting on a boiling pot brimming over with unsaid emotions. "Guess you just have to remind yourself which one of you I'm in love with when that happens."

"Aah enough, I'm cutting the call now. I can't deal with you if you're going to be like this the whole time." Jungkook laughs with his head thrown back, unable to contain the joy seeping through him.

"Okay, Mingyu. See you in a bit."

Mingyu hesitates and then rushes through an "I love you" before ending the call. Jungkook is grinning so wide, his face hurts. He looks at the familiar sights as they draw closer to their hotel, eyes fixed on the road but mind miles away trying to remember every little enunciation and trill of Mingyu's speech in the phone call, his soft, raspy laugh and every word in between that is responsible for the happiness spreading up to Jungkook's fingertips. He closes his eyes and leans back against the seat, a content smile still etched on his face. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> the title of the fic is from younha and rm's winter flower!  
> if you enjoyed reading this, leave me a comment!  
> [my twitter](https://twitter.com/deadseoull?s=08)  
> [my cc](https://curiouscat.me/deadwine)


End file.
